Here are some answers to questions I frequently get asked about StatsView Q1. What packages do I need to use it? A. Perl 5.005_03 Gnuplot 3.7 Perl Tk version 800.014 Perl Tk::GBARR version 1.0401 Q2. I have this vmstat/mpstat/iostat file I captured earlier, but StatsView doesn't seem to recognise it. How do I view it with StatsView? A. These data files have no timestamp information in them, so StatsView doesn't know the interval between samples, or indeed when the sampling started. It's therefore necessary to add a simple header to the data file before viewing it with StatsView. This line should be the first line in the file, and should be in the format: Start: DD/MM/YYYY hh:mm:ss Interval: sss where "Start" is the time that the sampling started, and "Interval" is the time between samples in seconds. Q3. I have a binary sar file I captured on system X, but I can't view it on system Y. Why? A. This has nothing to do with StatsView per se. The format of binary sar files is both architecture and OS release dependent. StatsView just uses "sar -A -f" to convert the binary file to ASCII before processing it. If the file was captured on a machine with a different architecture, or with a different OS reease it probably won't work. As a workaround you can transfer the binary file to a compatible machine, run "sar -A -f sar.dat > sar.txt", transfer the text file to the machine with StatsView on and pass the text file to StatsView. A better solution is not to capture binary sar files in the first place - they are both non-portable and significantly bigger than the text versions.